Uncas
- A famous Mohegan chief who is noted in fiction as the hero of James Fenimore
Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans, but in real life for his
services to the white colonists. To have been correct Cooper should
have called his novel The Last of the Mohegans, as the Mohicans,
or Mahicans, while related, were a different tribe from the Mohegans.

The true Uncas married a daughter of the
chief of the Pequot, but later was banished from that tribe. he then
warred against the Pequot, Narraganset, and allied tribes. After
taking Miantonomo, chief of the Narraganset, prisoner, he turned him over
to the English, who ordered Uncas to execute him.

Uncas died around 1682. A monument
to his memory was erected by the citizens of Norwich, Connecticut, in 1847,
the cornerstone of which had been laid by President Andrew jackson fourteen
years earlier. Another memorial consisting of a bronze statue on
a large boulder was erected on the site of James Fenimore Cooper's home
at Cooperstown, New York.